In India, we are taught to believe in timelines, in “settling down” at the “right age.” But love doesn’t work like a clock, striking at a certain time. Manoj and Madhulika are proof of this. A couple who got married in their 40s and are now raising twins together, the two navigated the social pressure to get married early and found true love when the time was right for them, not when society thought they should.
We took a trip down memory lane with them and learnt all about how they found their freedom, safe space, and home in each other.
Love has no timeline
Credit: Manoj Madhavan
It is ageist to assume that romance and love are only for those in their 20s. Many fall for this narrative, so when it comes to taking one’s time to find love, they rush in because society tells them to operate on a certain timeline. Manoj says, “There is no timeline,” with Madhulika adding, “There are no rules. The only rule that you should follow is you should feel this person is right for you, and you should feel at that time that this time is right for you.”
Talking about society’s constructs for when one should do what, Madhulika shares, “By the time I met him I was mature enough to understand what marriage means. It’s not about a checklist, it’s about companionship and it’s about a certain comfort level, a certain understanding, a connection. That’s how I evolved. It’s not about, [this person] should be earning this much, should look like this and should be from that community. All that is quite irrelevant.”
Letting someone in when you’re used to flying solo
When you’ve spent enough time on your own, you’re comfortable enough with your solitude to value yourself, and appreciate a partner. But sometimes, it’s not easy to chalk out boundaries when you’ve been used to your space for so long.
Manoj and Madhulika’s maturity actually helped them cope with this: “There is never a relationship where there are no disagreements. But it is basically between both of you to understand whether this really requires a discussion. Does it really matter to you? These things happen when you are mature and you’ve already had those relationships where you’ve fought for those things and you realised there was no need to get into all that.”
For Madhulika and Manoj, making the transition from being independent to having a partner did not mean losing themselves. They respected each other’s boundaries well, and fit into each other’s lives like gloves. Madhulika, in fact, welcomed the change: “You use the word adjustment when you really have to try and make something work. I wanted somebody in my life. I was tired of being alone. So when I had somebody, it was more of a positive change for me.”
Credit: Manoj Madhavan
Despite his friends’ warnings, Manoj even felt marriage isn’t the confining situation many describe it as: “My friends used to say, ‘Ab tu mar gaya beta.’ Aise nahi bolte ladke, typical? ‘Ab pata chalega boss tereko life kya hoti hai.’ For me, six months passed, one year passed, I was like ‘Kab aayega woh time jo mere friends bolte the ab toh mar gaya?’ I never felt that I got into a relationship so my social life has been affected. I do my parties, I go for my cricket coaching, badminton games. My friends still wonder, ‘Arrey yeh abhi bhi kar leta hai shaadi ke baad? Humara toh sab kuch ruk gaya shaadi ke baad.’”
The couple’s mantra for managing disagreements and maintaining healthy lives while being in a partnership is to “figure each other out, and respect what triggers us and stay away from those things.”
Dating in your 20s vs finding love in your 40s
This age-defying couple is an example of how freeing oneself from the expectations of society and living and loving by their own rules is the order of the day.
“I don’t know how it would have turned out in our younger years but yes, definitely when we are older, we are more mature. Career-wise, we are not struggling that way. Even as far as kids are concerned, we are far more patient with them. It’s a certain maturity that comes with age, that you’re able to handle each other better,” Madhulika answers when I ask what the best part about finding love in her 40s was.
You see, as romantic as college or high school love is, most of us wouldn’t make the same choices we made then now as well. It wasn’t too different for Manoj and Madhulika, whose decision to wait for the right one proved fruitful in the long run.
“In my 20s I was living in some dream world. I was so naive. I had such romantic notions of who I need to get married to. I was living in some castle, some dream world. In my 20s, I just kept waiting, thinking, ‘I’ll meet someone like this.’ I had a long checklist, or rather, a very romanticised version of who I would be,” Madhulika says, adding, “In my 20s, if a guy liked me too much and was willing to do anything and everything, I would be a little scared. I would find them weird.”
But a lot changes with time. Manoj elaborates, “What happens is, once age catches up with you and with your experience and exposures that you’ve had, there are a lot of things that you’re open to and then, you accept a lot of things. With your earlier relationships, maybe your maturity level, the way you handled confrontations, all that was very different.”
Finding their home in each other
Credit: Manoj Madhavan
By the time Manoj and Madhulika met each other, they were not only ready for love but also realised that they were right for each other. Madhulika talked about how things were different with him: “Later in my 30s, when I tried a few of those apps, I didn’t feel any comfort level with them. With Manoj, it was just extremely comfortable. I didn’t feel any pressure, I didn’t even feel like I have to say yes or no. He made me feel like I would feel with a really good friend. It happened very effortlessly. He made me feel very secure, very comfortable.”
She added, “I find him extremely supportive. When I met him I almost felt like I’d known him for years. Even after one year of marriage, we felt as though we’d been together forever. So there’s a certain comfort level, a certain support system that I have in him. I have felt that he’s family right from the beginning. I could trust him immediately to support me with everything and anything. And not just me, my family too. Whatever happens.”
Reaching this point wasn’t all roses and no thorns though.
Navigating social pressures
Credit: Manoj Madhavan
Once a person crosses 27 in India, the marriage conversation “enters the chat”, as the kids say. Parents, relatives, and even friends begin pushing the person towards marriage. Manoj describes it thus: “Everybody used to taunt my father or sister then saying, ‘You are not pushing him enough.’”
For many, beyond navigating this familial and social pressure, seeing your friend group get coupled-up is often the biggest challenge. Madhulika talks about the indirect peer pressure of it all, saying, “The most pressure I would feel would be seeing couples, my friends with their husbands. A group of people being very couple-y or lovey-dovey. That’s the kind of pressure I felt, that you want to be with someone and you see that all your friends are happy with someone. Your friends who used to be single are all now happily married.”
Beyond this, there was also the familial pressure. Madhulika shares, “My mom used to always say, ‘We are old and what’ll happen to you after we are gone?’ I understand from their point of view that they would be worried.” But she refuted this oft-cited rationale for getting married with this thought: “If out of pressure we end up getting married to the wrong person, we’ll just end up regretting it later and you’ll end up regretting it as well, right? So it’s much better to wait and leave a few things to fate.”
Swimming against the current in search of greener pastures
Adhering to the social norm that you have to get married by a certain age or to a person who ticks certain boxes can be detrimental towards your search for true love. Madhulika has the best advice in that regard: “The usual thing in India is that you should get married by a particular age and you should find someone and you should have a checklist. I don’t think that checklist matters. I don’t think age really matters. If for some reason you’re not getting married, it will happen when it has to. I don’t think you have to panic and you have to think that it’s the end of the world. You can be single and be really happy. If you want to find someone, it’ll happen eventually, whenever it is the right time. That whole social pressure of getting married, especially in India, is not right. I feel because of that a lot of people make mistakes.”
Among these mistakes is the fact that a lot of us try to rationalise toxic relationships in our younger years because we think things will work themselves out. Manoj reminds us that one can’t fall into that trap: “I think people lie to themselves. People tend to not admit that this is not going to work. To back out from that [toxic] relationship sometimes becomes difficult. It’s like saying, ‘Marry in haste and repent at leisure.’ Some kind of messaging comes to you, giving you the idea it may not work. You must acknowledge it. Don’t try and fight that and say that it’ll get sorted later.”
Not doing what everyone else was doing worked out perfectly for Manoj. He narrates how people tell him, “‘You’ve really lived your life. For 45 years you had a bachelor’s life and today, you’ve connected with somebody with whom you still do whatever you used to do during your bachelor days.’”
Adding how their future is all about the rules they’ve made for themselves, not what society dictates, the couple share: “We have moved. We’ve had a successful career. At this age, we’ve taken a huge risk and we’ve given that up, we’ve moved to a different, smaller city. We’ve had kids very late with the vision and with the hope that we can create very peaceful happy lives for ourselves here, doing what we really want to do. We don’t want to be in that rat race; we want to enjoy this pace of life with our kids.”
Lead Image Credit: Manoj Madhavan
